


we are not soldiers

by 26stars



Series: AU August 2020 [19]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Genius millionaire playboy philanthropist Stark v.1, Historical AU, Hydra, References to human experimentation, References to past trauma, SSR era, WWII era, Won't go into much detail on it though, if you know Jiaying's history with Hydra know it isn't pretty, references to past torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26083708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: Peggy Carter has seen plenty in this war already. When her team raids a Hydra scientific base and they find a woman in a cage, however, she doesn't have a script prepared. The woman is a prisoner of war and obviously a long way from home, and Peggy commits to helping her find her way back...to her homeland, and to some semblance of peace.For the AU August day 23 prompt: Historical AU
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Jiaying
Series: AU August 2020 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860802
Comments: 20
Kudos: 35
Collections: AOS AU August 2020, Women of the MCU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TomatoBookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomatoBookworm/gifts).



> Ok so I wasn't intending for this to be more than a oneshot and I've been trying hard to not start more multichaps but I've been very attached to this idea for awhile and have more to say than I have time to write today. The tentative plan is three chapters, but we'll see what happens.

Peggy Carter had seen a lot of horrors, this far into her time on the war front. She’d seen men carried off the field missing limbs and other pieces. She’d seen victims of fires, carnage of bombs, and the effects of chemical weapons. She had seen friends fall, seen civilians suffer, had even glimpsed the horrors in a concentration camp as it was liberated.

Nothing had prepared her for what she found in Reinhardt’s fortress.

Her team was putting men in handcuffs, packaging objects of unknown origin, methodically working their way through the catacombs of rooms, breaking locks off doors as they went. Behind one door was a room full of file cabinets and reel cans, likely records of this place’s grim operations. Behind another door, there was a room that looked like a surgery theater. Behind the next, an interrogation room. Behind a door at the far end of the castle, they found living prisoners. 

Behind another, cadavers. Many of them.

Some appeared to have been partway through dissections. Some looked charred, though their clothes were intact. Some appeared to be stone, grotesque statues of people in varying states of panic.

Peggy walked past most of this, designating tasks and trying not to linger over any single horror for too long. She could compartmentalize, hold it together until later…

But then, in one room.

A woman.

She was not in a cell—her prison was quite literally a cage, with not even enough height for her to stand upright. She was curled in a fetal position in a corner, her head bowed over her folded legs, hiding her face, but by her hair, frame, and the dirty red dress, Peggy knew this was no male.

This time, Peggy shouted for help.

The woman did not stir, but one of Peggy’s men came running.

“Open it!” Peggy ordered, pointing at the lock. Tools were rushed over, and as the saw began working on the metal, the woman inside finally seemed to surface from her stupor, though it was only to briefly raise her head and study the person at the door and then shrink back further into a corner.

Peggy was surprised, however, as she glimpsed the woman’s face, to realize she had Asian features.

Once the bisected lock fell to the ground, the soldier pulled open the door and reached in to pull the woman out, but this, finally elicited an actual reaction. The woman made a fearful sound with a hoarse voice and raised and raised one hand weakly, though it was not to accept his—it was to push him away.

“Wait a moment, Gregson,” Peggy ordered suddenly, stepping forward. “Back up. Don’t frighten her more than she already is.”

Gregson picked up his tools and backed away, and Peggy ordered him to fetch a blanket and some food from their trucks—she didn’t trust anything in this building to be free of toxins.

“It’s all right,” Peggy said as they waited, kneeling on the cold ground a few feet from the entrance to the cage. “I’m Carter. I don’t know how long you’ve been here or what’s happened to you, but we’re not here to hurt you, we’re here to help you. Reinhardt has been captured—he’s not going to touch you ever again.” She pointed to her badge as she spoke, then at the Hydra logo splashed on the wall, then made an X with her arms.

The woman only gazed at her suspiciously, not appearing to have understood anything Peggy had said.

“You look very uncomfortable in there,” Peggy tried again. “Wouldn’t you like to come out?” She beckoned with her hand, trying not to look too eager.

For a moment, the woman only blinked, but then she slowly began to unfold her frame, though the action appeared to take a lot of effort. She un-bent her legs, pressed one hand to the floor, started to crawl towards the door…

She almost immediately collapsed, spilling onto the grid floor of her cage, and Peggy shifted forward instinctively, reaching in but stopping short of touching the woman. Instead, she left her hand on the ground near the woman’s face, where she could hopefully see it.

“I want to help you,” she said, hoping her intentions, if not her words, could be understood. “Let me help you out.”

The woman looked up and met her eyes briefly, and after a moment, she weakly grabbed Peggy’s hand.

Peggy took this as her sign and moved forward, helping to drag the woman out.

She didn’t dare try to get the woman to stand, at first, only laying her out on the floor and helping her slowly stretch out her legs and back and arms. The woman grimaced and whimpered once, and Peggy noticed a smell of human waste clinging to her clothes.

_How long was she in there…_

Gregson suddenly returned with the food and blanket, and at the sight of him, the woman immediately gasped and reacted. Though her movements were slow, it was obvious that she was trying to put distance between the man and herself, so Peggy barked at Gregson to just put everything down and leave, _now._ Once they were alone again, the woman settleed, and Peggy’s heart squeezed painfully at the thought of what this woman had already endured at the hands of men in uniforms.

She helped the woman sit up again and wrapped her in the blanket, then opened the pail of food and offered her the bread and dried fruit inside. The woman’s fingers were clumsy but she managed to get everything to her mouth unassisted, and Peggy offered her her own canteen for a drink.

“Do you think you can stand?” Peggy asked when the food was gone, and when the woman only gazed at her, perplexed, Peggy demonstrated by standing herself, then offering the woman a hand up.

The stranger took her hand cautiously, and, with Peggy lifting her by her elbows, managed to get to her feet, leaning heavily on the cage next to her for support. Peggy was surprised to find that even not standing upright, the woman seemed as tall as herself.

For the first time, the woman tried to speak, her voice still barely more than a rasp. She didn’t look at Peggy as she murmured a phrase Peggy didn’t understand, but the humiliated look on her face lent Peggy enough of her meaning.

“It’s all right, give yourself time. I’m here to help you.”

Slowly and with her eyes on the woman’s, Peggy took her hand and carefully brought the woman’s arm over her shoulders, then wrapped her own arm around the woman’s waist—the wounded-soldier three-legged race, some called the posture. They made their way slowly to the door, and though the woman hesitated at the sight of the activity and the number of men in the hallway, Peggy squeezed her waist reassuringly.

“I’m with you. I’ll keep you safe.”

She felt the woman glance at her, then she took a brave step forward.

Peggy stayed with her every step of the way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peggy gets the stranger medical help. A friend makes them a solution to the language barrier.

The woman did not want Peggy to leave her side, not for a moment. Her gait was slow as the two of them made their way down the lower hall, so Peggy shouted for one of her men to bring a stretcher. Once it arrived between two men, however, the woman had refused to let go of Peggy in order to lie or even sit on it. So Peggy instead helped her walk all the way down the dark halls, nearly carried her up the stairs out of the dungeon of a place, and then finally they were blinking like bats in sunlight together, making Peggy wonder how long it had been since the other woman had seen it.

A tent had been set up on the far side of the courtyard by then, and Peggy led the woman straight to it. The woman was barely lifting her feet by then, and Peggy was getting tired herself, so once a cot was set up inside, Peggy willingly sat on it with her. She explained the situation to the field medic, who immediately wrapped the woman in another blanket and brought them more food and water. He was saying things about dehydration and hypothermia, suggesting injections and sleep, but Peggy felt the woman tense as soon as the man knelt to inspect her more closely. Peggy squeezed the woman’s hand, giving her a meaningful look, then turned back to the medic.

“I assure you I’m not planning to use this,” she said as she unstrapped her gun from its holster, “but I’ll be doing this so that she trusts that I won’t let you hurt her.”

She laid her gun across her lap, pointing it at him with her finger on the trigger.

“That’s not necessary, ma’am,” the medic said immediately, looking flustered, but Peggy shook her head.

“As you were,” she said, nodding back towards the patient and not moving her gun.

The Asian woman tolerated being examined at least superficially, though she obviously couldn’t answer any questions for the medic since she didn’t understand them. Peggy sent someone to fetch Morita, and the woman perked up when she caught sight of him, but he only listened to the woman speaking his direction for all of twenty seconds before shaking his head. When the woman paused, he said something to her in Japanese, and at this, she looked panicked, drawing back from him.

Morita sighed, turning to Peggy.

“She’s speaking Chinese, which I don’t know. And based on her reaction, she may have some history with the Japanese already,” he said grimly. “Sorry—I don’t think I can help you.”

The language barrier would clearly be problematic if they hoped to actually help her, and Peggy brainstormed ideas while she sat next to the woman and supervised the medic as he cut away her soiled clothes and helped her into a patient tunic.

An idea eventually came to her, and she shouted for a soldier outside the tent to bring her a field phone. The woman tolerated Peggy holstering her gun and moving a few feet away to use it, provided Peggy didn’t turn her back.

“Howard,” Peggy said when the call connected, “I have a challenge for you.”

~

Howard was back at the French SSR base when he took her call that afternoon, but he turned up in Austria early the next morning in his private plane. The female prisoner had finally fallen asleep on her cot in the field tent, so Peggy was finally able to slip away and meet him outside, where he was waiting in the commander’s headquarters.

“All right, I stayed up all night tinkering before I got on the plane, but this is still a work in progress, of course,” he said as he showed Peggy the device he’d created from scratch in the past few hours. “I have a research assistant in New York who’s Chinese, and I kept him on the phone for a few hours straight, trying to get the dictionary created.”

The device was a bit bigger than a telephone, with a receiver attached on one side and a speaker in the middle.

“Here,” Howard said, offering Peggy the microphone. “Try saying a phrase.”

“I’m taller than Howard Stark,” Peggy said into the receiver, looking him in the eye.

Howard narrowed his eyes at her in a half-hearted scowl, but he only clicked a button on the device instead of retorting.

“Wǒ bǐ Howard Stark gāo,” a lifeless voice rattled back.

Peggy smiled. Of course she had no idea if the translation was correct, but it was miles from where they were before.

“It will probably only do for simple sentences, but I can keep pestering my researcher and adding data if you can’t get an interpreter on-site soon,” Howard said as he fitted the receiver back onto the base.

“Well, if she can answer some important questions, we might be able to get her with someone who knows her language quickly,” Peggy said, picking up the device. “Why don’t you come along?”

The woman was still sleeping when Peggy approached her bedside again with Howard in tow, but she stirred when Peggy made too much noise setting the device on a small pop-up table between the beds. As her eyes blinked open and she caught sight of Howard, the woman immediately attempted to sit up, and she managed it much more quickly than she’d been able to anything the day before.

“This is my friend,” Peggy told her, pointing at Stark. “He made this so that we can help you.”

Her gestures didn’t seem to do much good at getting her meaning across, so Peggy just picked up the receiver from the device again.

“My name is Carter,” she spoke into it. After hitting the button Stark pointed her to, a mechanical voice translated.

“Wǒ jiào Carter.”

The woman looked startled, but after only a second, she cracked the first hint of a smile.

“Carter,” she repeated. Her voice sounded only a little less raspy than the day before. “Wǒ jiào Jiāyíng.”

~

They had a lot to ask, of course, and not all the words were there. Stark sat on a cot behind Peggy and took notes of the missing words while the two women went back and forth, answering each question as well as possible.

“How long had you been captive?”

“ _I don’t know. What’s the date?”_

“June 1, 1945.”

“ _I was (captured) by the Japanese in 1942. I had been trying to (flee) the country out of Hong Kong—someone told me there were still a few (supply) boats going out, and I could probably be (smuggled) on one. I don’t know how long ago I was put on a flight to (Europe)—it feels like it’s been years since I was anything but a (prisoner). I didn’t know where we were going until we arrived and I saw all the foreign (faces).”_

“Where are you from originally?”

“ _Hunan, China_.”

“Do you know why you were singled out from the other prisoners here? Were you experimented on?”

At this question, the woman was silent for a long time before answering again.

“ _The old man with glasses had something. It was made of metal. He wanted me to touch it. It killed other men, but it didn’t kill me_.”

Peggy called for one of her men to bring the ledger of Objects of Unknown Origin that had been collected in the past few days. After reading the descriptions, Peggy ordered item #084 brought to the medical tent in its crate with the stipulation of no one touching it with bare hands. While they waited, Peggy asked the woman more questions.

“Did you hear anything of Reinhardt’s plans for this object?”

_“I didn’t understand anything. They all started leaving not long after his experiment with me.”_

“Do you know where this device came from?”

“ _No_.”

“Did you experience any side effects after touching it.”

Jiaying shook her head. “ _I don’t know_.”

“Do you know if there were other prisoners in the building?”

The woman’s gaze went distant. “ _I was pulled from a room with many (cells). It was beneath where you found me. Have you already (released) those men?”_

From another soldier, Peggy confirmed that they had, then she stood as Dugan arrived with the crate she’d asked for. Jiaying tensed immediately as he approached, drawing back as far as she could on her small cot. Peggy donned the thickest work gloves available and opened the crate just wide enough for Jiaying to see inside, and when she immediately nodded, looking frantic, Peggy slammed it shut again.

“Take this and triple-pack it, Dugan,” she ordered, using the crowbar to tap the nails back into the crate’s lid. “This woman said it’s very dangerous. Get it on the next transport out of here, and keep it far away from Stark here.”

“Hey now,” her friend said, though he did watch Dugan closely as he carried the crate away.

A medic arrived to ask more medical questions, and with informed consent, the woman agreed to receive some intravenous medicine. Peggy talked her through the process, stayed by her side while he gave her the injection, and then offered to help her eat the hot meal offered. Howard made himself scarce while they ate, muttering something about waking up his researcher to get more translations and heading off towards the communications tent.

“ _He’s not a soldier_ ,” Jiaying observed between spoonfuls of broth, saying it twice since Peggy did not have the translator turned on the first time.

“No, he’s not,” Peggy explained once she understood the woman’s comment. “Just a smart man we’re glad to have on our side.”

“ _He made this_?” Jiaying pointed at the translator.

“Yes. In one night.”

“ _He’s very smart_.”

“He knows it.”

After the meal, the woman was already exhausted again, so Peggy encouraged her to rest.

“ _What do you plan to do with me_?” the woman asked before she lay back down on her cot.

“Do with you? Nothing,” Peggy said. “The organization that the men in that fortress worked for has been defeated, and you’re a prisoner of war. You’ll stay here until you are healthy enough to travel, and then we will make arrangements to return you to your country.”

“ _The white soldiers said something similar after they (acquired) me from the Japanese_ ,” Jiaying said, her gaze hard. “ _I don’t believe most (promises) from soldiers anymore_.”

Peggy’s heart squeezed painfully in her chest.

“That’s understandable. But I’m not a soldier, either.”

The woman looked her skeptically. “ _You have a uniform_.”

“I’m a consultant.”

“ _But the men obey you_.”

Peggy smirked. “They don’t dare do otherwise.”

A small smile flickered across Jaiying’s lips, so quickly that Peggy thought she might have imagined it. “ _Will you stay close_?”

Peggy glanced outside at the work her men were doing, emptying the fortress. They could handle it without her. “If you want me to.”

Jiaying lowered her eyes. “ _I would feel better_.”

She didn’t have to explain.

“Then I will.”

Peggy had not slept the night before either, so she called for another cot and set it up near Jiaying’s. She kept her boots on—they were still in enemy territory after all—but she did undo her tie and doff her jacket.

Jiaying had not drifted off before Peggy climbed onto her own cot, so with a questioning expression, Peggy nudged her cot closer until they were resting against each other side-by-side. Jiaying nodded, and when Peggy lay down, tucking herself beneath a field blanket, the woman briefly looked over at her.

“Carter,” she murmured without the translator. “Xièxiè.”

Peggy could only guess what it meant, but coupled with the relief in the woman’s eyes, she figured she had it right.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peggy helps Jiaying recover a little more than her health and gets some orders from above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had originally planned three chapters, but we'll need one more. Hope you don't mind. 
> 
> Happy new year, Tomato! <3
> 
> Translations of Chinese in the end notes

When Peggy woke up from her nap that afternoon, it was to the sunniest weather she had seen yet in this part of Austria. The patient beside her was still sleeping soundly, but she roused when Peggy called out to another soldier for a report on the time and status of the mission within the building.

Jiaying watched without stirring as Peggy sat up on her cot to listen to her soldier, retying her tie and donning her jacket again. She waited until the messenger was gone again to open a small compact mirror and inspect her makeup, which was miraculously intact even after a day and a half of wear. Her hair was mussed though, but she flipped the mirror closed and reached to tie it back in a bun, Jiaying suddenly sat up.

“ _W_ _ǒ bāng n_ _ǐ.”_

Jiaying gestured towards Peggy’s hair with a question in her eyes, and Peggy, guessing her intention, nodded. The woman’s hands were gentle as she found the pins still holding back the upper part of Peggy’s hair. Reaching around her to drop them on Peggy’s lap, Jiaying then set to work plaiting Peggy’s hair in a tight braid, which she then curled into a coil and pinned in place.

“Thank you,” Peggy said when she turned around again, smiling as she explored the style with her fingertips. “That feels quite nice.”

Jiaying only smiled back at her, one that lasted a little longer than the one this morning, and Peggy reached for the translator.

“Would you like me to help you get clean?”

Bathing in camp had always been one of the more challenging aspects of usually being the lone female on the field, but by now Peggy knew how to manage a decent sponge bath without risking too much exposure should anything unexpected happen. She did this today by commandeering a spare tent and getting it set up a bit further from the action (Jiaying now seemed slightly more willing to let her venture out of sight for a short amount of time) and then Peggy fetched a thermos of hot water from the mess tent. Setting up a basin and a few bed linens to use as towels, she “borrowed” a spare men’s uniform from the trucks and brought along her own pack that had followed her everywhere on the front, and then she went to escort Jiaying to the tent, carrying a lantern in her free hand.

After pinning a blanket over the entrance, Peggy offered the woman her own bar of soap and then let her wash her own face and hands before Peggy helped her out of the patient’s gown in order to scrub the rest of her skin. Jiaying’s frame was not quite emaciated, but Peggy could still see her shoulder blades and the bumps of her spine as she leaned over the basin to rinse her chest and neck. She also seemed to tire after only a few minutes, reminding Peggy that she was still healing, so once she was dry again, Peggy helped her into the spare uniform and then put a pair of too-big socks and shoes on her feet. Then, pouring out fresh, hot water, she encouraged Jiaying to lay her head over Peggy’s outstretched leg so that she could help the woman wash her hair.

When this was done, Peggy squeezed as much water out as she could, then wrapped it in a tea-sized towel for her while she went through her toiletry kit again. At the sight of a comb, Jiaying eagerly snatched it (though the movement was still a bit slow), running her hands reverently over the tortoiseshell before unwrapping the towel and taking it to her clean hair.

 _“W_ _ǒ h_ _ǎoj_ _ǐ ni_ _án m_ _éi y_ _òng sh_ _ūzile_ ,” she said, working the comb through her tangles.

“It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it?” Peggy agreed, only guessing at her meaning as Jiaying closed her eyes, seeming to relish the feeling.

Once her hair was combed, Peggy helped her braid it back into a single plait, then reached for her compact mirror and offered it to Jiaying.

The woman hesitated as she opened it, not at first tilting it up to see her face.

“Yěxǔ wǒ bù yào jì zhù wǒ xiànzài de yàngzi.”

Peggy waited, unsure what she meant, but then Jiaying slowly raised the mirror, seeing herself in the lantern light. For a long moment, she just stared expressionlessly, turning the mirror this way and that, studying herself.

 _“W_ _ǒ sh_ _òule_ ”, she finally said, glancing at Peggy, who smiled.

“You look lovely,” she said truthfully, and Jiaying smiled perhaps understanding, perhaps not.

Eventually, Peggy reached for her bag again.

“If you’d like…” She held out a tube of lipstick, but Jiaying only stared at it blankly. When Peggy opened it and pushed the tube up to expose the red makeup however, Jiaying seemed to catch on and reached for it eagerly.

“Here,” Peggy said, opening the mirror again and holding it up for Jiaying. The woman did not use the tube on her lips, instead using her smallest finger to move the dye from the stick to her lips, rubbing it gently across the chapped surface. When she had managed the task as best as she could, she glanced up at Peggy, looking suddenly shy.

“ _H_ _ǎok_ _àn ma_?”

“Lovely,” Peggy said reassuringly.

“Lo-ly,” Jiaying repeated, making Peggy smile.

“You are lovely,” she repeated, pointing at Jiaying.

“You are lovely,” Jiaying repeated slowly.

Peggy’s smile grew. “Yes. You are.”

Once she had helped Jiaying back to the medical tent and into her cot again, Peggy went to throw out the water and collapse the tent. On the way back to the supply tent with it, she ran into Dugan.

“How’s the woman?” he asked, pausing in his work.

“Recovering,” Peggy answered, glancing towards the medical tent.

“She say any more about that thing you had me pack up?” Dugan asked, adjusting the rucksack on his back.

Peggy shook her head. “No, but it had better be buried in a transporter truck by now.”

Dugan scoffed. “Are you kidding me? With Stark still hanging out?” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s in my pack.”

“Don’t touch it,” Peggy said immediately. It sounds very dangerous.

Dugan nodded quickly. “It’s wrapped up good, don’t worry. But I didn’t trust him anyway.”

Peggy made a grim face of agreement. “Probably best. Any word from HQ?”

“Nothing new. Prisoners have already been transported to the Rat facility. Objects of unknown origin need to go to the New York SSR base on the next transport.”

“Good. Have you seen Stark around?”

“He took that machine of yours off to a tent a while ago. Haven’t seen him since.”

Peggy had not, in fact, noticed that the device was gone, but as she came back into the medical tent a few moments later with a bowl of soup and a package of crackers, she saw the empty stool where it had been now occupied by their commanding officer.

“Colonel Phillips, sir,” Peggy said, pausing just inside the tent with the bowl in her hands. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

The elderly man looked up as she entered, though he did not stand. “I heard the reports about the things you found here—wasn’t expecting for one of them to be a woman.” He said it with a cursory glance in Jiaying’s direction, where the woman was sitting up stiffly in her cot, watching him suspiciously.

“She was locked up in a cage amongst the medical equipment,” Peggy explained, drawing nearer and setting the soup down on a nearby field table. She passed the package of biscuits to Jiaying, but she didn’t seem to see them, her gaze fixed unflinchingly on the officer.

“Dugan was telling me that they found several cans of film down there today,” Phillips said, nodding soberly. “I’m in no hurry to have them screened, but hopefully they’ll offer a little clarity on what Reinhardt was up to.”

“Do you have orders for me, sir?” Peggy asked, hoping he would notice that the bowl of soup was probably getting cold.

“Yes—don’t give out uniforms to civilians.” He gestured unnecessarily to Jiaying, who only stared back. “And tell me what you think we oughta do with her.”

“I told her we would get her well enough to travel and then go from there,” Peggy said curtly. “She said she’s from China, but the fighting isn’t over there yet. Unless you’ve got some other news?”

“Nothing from the East yet,” Phillips said, getting to his feet. “Well, once this castle is cleared, bring her along with you. We’ll figure out something closer to HQ for her—safer than the front for sure.”

The man donned his cap, which he touched the brim of in Jiaying’s direction.

“Don’t be long, Carter,” he ordered, and then was gone.

Peggy wasn’t willing to waste more time looking for Howard, so she just focused on helping Jiaying eat a bit more. Howard did eventually return to the tent, announcing that he had added more vocabulary, and Peggy quickly used it to explain who Phillips was and what he had just told her.

“Would you prefer to go back to China, once it’s safe?” Peggy asked, deciding to make the question a simple one.

Jiaying nodded, taking her turn with the microphone. “ _It’s my home. I don’t know if I even have anything…anyone… left there, but I certainly don’t have anything here_.”

Peggy nodded. “I understand. Well, we’ll figure that out when you’re healthy enough to travel. For now, I need to help my men finish the job here.”

Jiaying had eaten an acceptable amount of soup, and Peggy reached for the thermos on the table, pouring some of the weak tea inside into the cap and offering it to Jiaying. The woman sniffed it once, then took a small sip. As realization spread across her features, she took a larger sip, reaching for the microphone.

“ _It’s been years since I tasted tea…”_

“You like tea?” Peggy repeated cheerfully into the microphone. “Then I maybe you’ll enjoy England after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Jiaying starts fixing Peggy's hair, she says "I'll help you."  
> When Jiaying takes the comb, she says, "I haven't used a comb in a long time."  
> Before she looks in the mirror, she says, "Maybe I don't want to remember what I look like right now." After she looks, she says "I got thinner."  
> After she puts on the lipstick, she says, "Does it look good?"


End file.
